By Jody Godoy and Sam Tabahriti
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump has pardoned Joe Lewis, the British billionaire who pleaded guilty to insider trading in New York last year, a source close to Lewis'
family said on Thursday.
Lewis, whose family trust controls a majority of London's Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, joins a list of wealthy individuals convicted of financial crimes who have received pardons from Trump in his second term, including Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Nikola founder Trevor Milton.
"I am pleased all of this is now behind me, and I can enjoy retirement and watch as my family and extended family continue to build our businesses based on the quality and pursuit of excellence that has become our trademark," Lewis said in a statement.
The Athletic reported the pardon earlier on Thursday.
Lewis passed inside information on his portfolio companies to two of his private pilots as well as friends, personal assistants and romantic partners, according to prosecutors. Lewis, who is in his late 80s, was sentenced to pay a $5 million fine and ordered to serve three years of probation.
Lewis collected inside information about four companies in which he had invested, and tipped friends and associates between 2019 and 2021, prosecutors said.
The companies included cancer therapy developer Mirati Therapeutics and BCTG Acquisition, a blank-check company that Boxer Capital sponsored and which took biotech company Tango Therapeutics public in a merger in 2021.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York and Sam Tabahriti in London; Editing by Conor Humphries)
